Mastering the Art of Conversion

Digital marketing has a lot of components. Some think that you can just use digital marketing to build a brand. Some think that content marketing and social media will get the job done.

A few close the loop with the final component in the funnel: Conversion.

Here are the 5 major components of Digital Marketing.

• Branding - People know you, have heard good things about you, and trust you to some extent; even before they enter your marketing funnel.
• Content - People read your emails, and blogs, watch your videos, and "pay" attention to your content, even before they consider paying you money.
• Lead Generation - Convert website traffic and content attention into NEP (Name, email, and phone number)
• Lead Nurturing - Send drip marketing emails, and retarget existing leads and people who have entered the funnel with more content (middle of the funnel content like customer testimonials and case studies).
• Conversion - Convert leads into paying customers through persuasion. Sales emails, sales pages, sales videos, live webinars, and sales meetings.

Digital marketing cannot work if the loop is not closed with conversion. All the branding, content, and leads will not be sustainable unless they are converted into paying customers that can bring in revenue and profits.

Though branding is an important part of the digital marketing funnel, you cannot do branding directly. Branding, many times, is a side-effect of a well-executed digital marketing funnel. As they say, sales is the best way to build a brand.

People pay attention to content. Even in traditional media, people watch TV and read newspapers or magazines for the content, not for the ads. Content is what people want and ads for products and services siphon off the attention of people who are consuming the content.

However content alone cannot bring in revenue. People pay attention but unless they are put into a funnel, you cannot convert them into paying money.

A lot of bloggers, YouTubers, and "Influencers" try to make money just with the content. Usually, it is done through brand partnerships and sponsorships (which in most cases don't pay that much and the revenue is inconsistent).

That's why lead generation is important. Without generating leads, you do not have any prospects to reach out to, and without reaching out, you cannot nurture them or convert them into customers. If you want a complete crash course on Lead Generation, watch this video on my channel.

Lead generation is usually done with lead magnets. Lead magnets are usually a good piece of content that is given for free, like an ebook or a video recording. The value of the lead magnet should be good enough that people want to give away their contact information in return for the lead magnet. And it's a good idea to stagger the delivery of the lead magnet so that the engagement is kept for a longer time.

One of the best performing lead magnets that I have is the free digital marketing course with 25 videos. The 25 videos are delivered over a period of 25 days via email. One lesson per day. This makes sure that people are able to stay engaged with my content for almost a month after downloading the lead magnet.

When the content of the lead magnet is delivered in a staggered way, lead nurturing happens. When people hear from you for almost a month, magic happens. The brand recall goes up and they are more likely to buy from you when the time is right.

But nurturing the leads doesn't put money in the bank. Nurtured leads have to convert into paying customers, else you will not be able to get the return on investment of lead generation, content creation, and driving traffic to the content in the first place.

That's why mastering conversion is very important.

How do you convert leads into paying customers?

There are a bunch of methods, depending on the ticket size.

• Direct Store Checkout
• Video Sales Page with a payment call to action
• Sales webinars
• Sales meetings (online/offline)

Store checkout is good for commoditized products and low ticket prices. Many e-commerce stores just have a simple checkout system and there is not much persuasion involved in converting the website visitor into a paying customer.

Products and services with a mid to high ticket price and complexity need a video sales page to convert the visitor into a paying customer. And in most cases, the visitor to this page has to be a nurtured lead. Cold traffic to a sales page with a video sales letter usually doesn't convert into paying customers.

Sales webinars are a good alternative to video sales pages because there is more engagement in a sales webinar and also builds trust in a faster and more efficient way. One of the benefits of sales webinars is that you can do Q&A sessions with the prospects so that people can ask any questions they have before they buy the product.

Sales meetings are the most powerful forms of conversion. When you do sales meetings, you can sell high-ticket products and complex services. The prospect will need personalized attention and they need to get all their objections cleared before they can move forward.

You just cannot sell a $1,000 product directly on a sales webinar on a video sales page. Prospects will not be comfortable doing a high-ticket transaction without talking to someone personally. That's why you need one-to-one sales calls and meetings to convert people to high-ticket items.

I am working on a course called "Conversion Mastery" and that's going to be one of the most important courses that I am going to launch.

Conversion Mastery will cover:

• Ad copywriting to get more clicks
• Landing page copywriting to get more leads
• Sales page copywriting to get more paying customers
• How to craft video sales letters
• How to do sales webinars
• How to convert prospects with sales calls and meetings

I hope this article helped you understand the importance of conversion and the different channels of conversion.

Look forward to my Conversion Mastery course and if you have any questions, mail me at deepak@learntoday.com

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju